Matrix II Font

Zuzana Licko’s original Matrix appeared in 1986, drawing on her earlier bitmap work. Emigre’s history connects its angular shapes and triangular serifs with the memory and printing constraints of early desktop computers. Matrix II is a later reworking: the redesign began in 2007 as part of the move to OpenType.

Read the publisher’s family page for the source account and the edition currently offered. Keep a family name distinct from its particular release, width or optical branch.

The Matrix II revision adjusts selected widths, overshoots and stroke relationships and adds an alternate single-storey g. Its resources include Book, Regular and Bold, alongside separately named width, italic, script and inline treatments. This is Emigre’s type family; it should not be confused with dot-matrix lettering or lettering from The Matrix films.

Use the original publisher specimen to inspect those features. An alternative can share a broad role without having the same letter shapes, metrics or character coverage.

Compare a short editorial heading with a paragraph, then inspect the triangular serifs at the actual output size. Try a width variant only when the column shape calls for it. If updating a legacy Matrix document to Matrix II, inspect line breaks and spacing instead of assuming the new edition preserves the earlier metrics.

For independent comparisons, try Vidaloka and Source Serif 4. Use the same wording and approximate output size. The related style guide provides broader design context.

Use Emigre to try the original and investigate the files, styles and terms for your intended workflow. This site does not distribute or serve Matrix II font software.

The editable alternatives here have their own source profiles and included licenses. For the difference between a font file and copied characters, read Unicode text versus fonts.